![\"Fisherman's](\"https:\/\/theshellybeach.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/IMG_2690.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nSo, more sea lions:<\/p>\n
<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/div>\nSea lions with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background:<\/p>\n
<\/a> <\/a><\/div>\nWe were fortunate enough to have been able to buy Alcatraz tickets before they were sold out. There were signs that said they were sold out for days and days, all cruises. Even though I had been told that it would be SO COLD at Alcatraz, it was actually very warm on Friday. We sat in the heat waiting to board the Alcatraz ferry.<\/p>\n
I had never heard of (or did not retain, more likely) the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz between 1969-71. Several places around the Island were painted by the Indians – like this area on what was an officer apartment building:<\/p>\n
Same apartment building:<\/p>\n The Dock Tower:<\/p>\n Wikipedia says that the Officers’ Club burned in a fire of “disputed origins” during the aforementioned Indian Occupation:<\/p>\n Quartermaster building:<\/p>\n Water tower, also painted by Indians:<\/p>\n I also thought the gardens\/plants on Alcatraz were very interesting. Alcatraz is, of course, a rock. As soon as American people arrived at the island in the mid-1800s, they brought packets of dirt to make the island more hospitable. From the time of military use through the federal prison years, people, including prisoners, tried to plant seeds and plants from around the world that might do well in the harsh conditions. Some of the species survive. There has been a decent effort in the past 10 years or so to redevelop and preserve the diverse plant life on the island. If I lived in SF, I’d try to do some garden volunteering on Alcatraz. Here’s some plant stuff:<\/p>\n Creepy creepy morgue (through plexiglass):<\/p>\n Jail pictures!<\/p>\n Into a cell:<\/p>\n Creepy peeling paint:<\/p>\n The different hallways and areas of the prison have names like “Broadway” or “Times Square.” Here’s Broadway:<\/p>\n Pictures of the bars over windows in what was the library (there MIGHT have still been a few barren wooden bookcases in that area):<\/p>\n D-Block was where the baddest dudes stayed, and where the scary solitary cells were:<\/p>\n The Cellhouse from the outside:<\/p>\n The heat had burned off the fog, so a lot of our pictures of the city, bridges, etc. were decent:<\/p>\n Framed with some cool Alcatraz plant life:<\/p>\n Fancy landscape-oriented picture of a century plant with the Golden Gate in the background:<\/p>\n An interesting flower I’m going to try to identify later:<\/p>\n The Alcatraz Island Light:<\/p>\n We did take a bunch of pictures of ourselves finally:<\/p>\n Everyone had stupid audio tour headphones on all the time (so they were quiet, but extra oblivious about where they were standing and people trying to get by them), so we had a hard time finding people to take a picture of us. We finally got a couple with wicked Boston accents to trade picture-taking duties. <\/p>\n Cell phone selfie:<\/p>\n We finally made our way to the dock to catch the boat back at 4:15. We ran into this bold little guy (a baby gull?) while we were waiting:<\/p>\n It is worth noting that we could have fought some bitches in the line for the boat – they accused us of “slipping” (cutting?) in line, though some park dude was squawking about not staying in single file line – just GET ON THE BOAT. <\/p>\n A warning about picking up prisoners:<\/p>\n Alcatraz from the boat back to the pier:<\/p>\n We walked a bit to catch a cable car at the end of the line, so we got to watch them turn it around. I was standing right behind the dude who was “driving” the cable car…pretty cool.<\/p>\n We had to take Uber to get to the AT&T park from where we got off the cable car. The ballpark was just as nice as I had heard:<\/p>\n Main entrance, palm trees:<\/p>\n Seeing that it’s 9\/11 (sort of, I guess it’s very early 9\/12 now), here’s the 9\/11 stuff out front:<\/p>\n We had a margarita at the Mexican restaurant attached to the stadium while we waited for Brent to meet us, and then we went in and got settled. <\/p>\n Here’s the scoreboard:<\/p>\n Sponsory weirdness in the outfield:<\/p>\n Selfie at the Giants game:<\/p>\n The next post will have pictures of the pencils I bought in SF, but I’m including this one here since all the teams sharpen their pencils. I told the girl in the gift shop that I’d like to register a complaint about the sharpening of the pencils. I don’t think she cared.<\/p>\n You’ll also notice in that picture a ticket for the Virgin Flight Deck (the semi-exclusive 2nd level of the stadium). The people in front of were wrongly accused of sitting in the wrong seats by some Game Day employee who tried to apologize with those tickets. They asked us if we wanted to go up there, as they usually get tickets on that level and knew what was up. Juliette and I took them and went up there (after a confused detour to the suite level where we were turned away):<\/p>\n I took this picture of the lit-up Bay Bridge from the Virgin level:<\/p>\n Also, this shitty picture of boats waiting for balls hit out of the park:<\/p>\n I saw an almost-perfect game, pitched by Yusmeiro Petit. Perfect until the last out. <\/p>\n We got more weird expensive SF ice cream on the way home from the game, this time at The Ice Cream Bar…and then my last day in SF ended. Sad pandy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday morning, Juliette and I had breakfast at Darren’s Cafe, which turned out to have excellent breakfast AND Vietnamese food. Juliette let me go back to the Sea Lions with Brian’s fancy camera. 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